D&D 5E Why do guns do so much damage?

[Cadence]

I've always assume it was, but is Phoenix Command was pretty realistic for firearms anyway (from a brief skim and creation of part of a single character 30 years ago). Anyone here ever check it out and have a memory of how it had the relative damages? Did it have any older weapons?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I love these sorts of back-of-the-napkin calculations, but I'm pretty sure this is missing some key context. By this logic you should be able to hack a car door in half with your mighty longsword, while a bullet just pings off. In reality it's the opposite--a longsword would leave a dent, while, TV and movies notwithstanding, most bullets punch through car doors no problem.

Only a pretty light sword will bounce off a car door (for most cars) if swung like a baseball bat.

I’ve put a hatchet into the body of a 70’s Chevy, and I’m not a beefy guy. (It was a gutted parts car, but it wasn’t especially rusted.

 

[Flamestrike]

Relatively few single gunshot wounds actually kill people.

That's because relatively few people are shot in the chest or head. Hips, arms and legs (and even abdomen) shots are generally not lethal presuming urgent medical care is available.

However that also applies to cutting and stabbing injuries as well.

Your chances of surviving a 9mm or 5.56 round to the head or chest are negligible.

I can assure you, if I had a sword, and my opponent pulled a loaded single shot .45 handgun on me, I'd call off the attack.

 

[Sithlord]

So a Flintlock Pistol in 5e D&D deals 1d10 damage. A longsword deals 1d8 damage, 1d10 if you hold it with both hands.

But if you've ever seen what a sword can -do- to a human body, you know that the damage difference is incomparable!

Yeah, a bullet can be really effective at killing a person by catastrophically randomizing a narrow line through their body. If you hit something vital, death is assured in fairly short order, and if you don't hit something vital there's a decent shot the person will still bleed out over the course of the next hour or two, depending on their activity during that time and lack of medical care.

If you hit something vital with a sword, your target will -also- die in very short order. But if you don't strike something vital they will STILL DIE IN VERY SHORT ORDER. This is because a Sword catastrophically randomizes a very large area of the human body on each strike. At least when compared to something like a Pistol.

Depending on your ammo type a gun is going to put a fairly small hole in the front of your target and a moderately larger hole out of the back of your target with a relatively straight line between the two. With the appropriate training, a sword will completely eradicate your ability to have intestines that remain both inside your body and intact.

Take a look at this video if you can/care to (TW: Dead Animal, Fake Blood, Violence)

Spoiler: Kilij vs Pig

This is a Kilij. Roughly the same shape as a scimitar, it's got a slightly weighted tip to increase percussive force. It would not be out of place in most D&D campaign settings. It cuts -through- that pig on the first strike. And the second. The third sets it spinning and the fourth cuts through, again.

Compare that to a single hole running through your torso.

You could of course argue that that was a fairly small pig and thus the sword could easily pass through it. But upscale that pig and the damage would -still- be significant even if the sword didn't manage to pass through the bones. And all the internal organs in it's very wide, very deep, path would be randomized and compromised.

Now I'm not saying that pistols aren't deadly. They flatly and -absolutely- are deadly. But compared to the damage that a -sword- can do? It's not even in the same ball park. And that's not even getting INTO things like two-handed swords, axes of any variety, or spears...

Now you could argue that they do so much damage because HP is an abstraction and it shows how well they punch through armor... but you still make the same attack roll with the same bonuses and the same AC to overcome. And AC is -itself- an abstraction accounting for both the deflecting and cushioning effects of a piece of armor between you and oncoming metal.

And it only gets worse when you get into Revolvers and Rifles that jump up to the 2d8 and 2d10 damage range.

All things considered... I just feel like guns should do damage in-line with the rest of the weapons available. 1d6 for a pistol, 1d10 for a rifle. Basically a Hand and Heavy Crossbow for all intents and purposes. And then making them repeating weapons or whatever should just increase the number of shots before you have to spend an action reloading. I think the designers, and many players, overwhelmingly inflate just how much damage a gun does to a human being compared to the weapons, and monsters, D&D characters face.

That's my take, anyhow.

That is almost exactly what I do. Except I do 1d6 pistols and 1d8 rifles.

 

[Steampunkette]

Firearms ARE more lethal!

If you were standing 3 feet from me and I had a choice of a wheel-lock pistol firing a .75 cal ball, or a sword, I'm taking the gun.

You get shot in head, abdomen or the the chest, and you go down nearly instantly and die very soon after; you're in no position to be fighting after a shot to the chest or head at point blank range. Firearms have incredibly high lethality, and stopping power far in excess of a sword strike (lunge or hack).

Presuming someone was fighting back, even unarmed against a sword user, the unarmed person would likely wind up with several defensive cuts of varying severity before an incapacitating blow could be delivered (likely smashing down on an arm breaking bone and severing nerves and muscle, or potentially even the entire limb if forceful enough) which in turn would open the victim up for a killing blow to be delivered (likely a thrust through the chest or abdomen).

Most victims of sword attacks died hours or days later from blood loss or critical organ failure from a destroyed organ.

Getting hit with a single musket ball and you're probably going to die seconds after. It's a lot easier to hit a critical area with a gun (the chest or head) than it is with a sword, the damage it causes is generally far worse than what a sword can do with a thrust through those areas, and the stopping power is far greater (a sword thrust hurts now, and kills you later, a bullet generally stops you then and there). You generally need to be literally hacked to death with a sword or similar edged weapon, receiving multiple blows for the same lethality you get from a firearm.

Pull a gun on someone with a sword. If they dont back down, I know where my money is going.

Somebody had better go tell everyone with at least one, if not multiple, gunshot wound scars that they are dead.

Fifty Cent took nine rounds at close range. Including one in the chest and one in the head. Dude must've died that night and someone else is -pretending- to be him on stage.

And someone tell all those doctors to stop wasting their time on people who have been shot in the chest even though the mortality rate is 18% out of the 1,100 in this study: Unusually low mortality of penetrating wounds of the chest. Twelve years' experience - PubMed

Especially strange considering the mortality rate for those with cardiac damage from a bullet is only 24%.

I also PARTICULARLY like how you go on about people defending themselves against a sword having Defensive Wounds but act like someone in close range somehow isn't trying to, y'know, control the wrist and/or gun of the person pointing it at them like -that- never happens. All your gunshot victims are perfectly passive and your sword victims fight back. Weird that!

One shot to the torso, whether from a gun or a sword, is probably going to have a similar lethality without treatment. But the time involved that you can survive before treatment is going to be shorter with a sword because of the larger relative area of any damage done. Because a sword is, wait for it... Larger. And designed to impact a larger area than a bullet is. Meaning more blood vessels are open. Meaning you bleed out faster.

 

[Steampunkette]

That is almost exactly what I do. Except I do 1d6 pistols and 1d8 rifles.

That seems eminently reasonable. So it's like Hand-Crossbows and Light-Crossbows?

 

[Sithlord]

That seems eminently reasonable. So it's like Hand-Crossbows and Light-Crossbows?

I was thinking short bow and longbow although pistols had the advantage of two weapon fighting. But I gave pistols a range of 30 feet. Short bow of course is much better range

 

[Steampunkette]

Also worth noting: A wheellock pistol within arm's reach of a person with a sword and lethal intent would be useless.


Because pulling the trigger causes the spring-loaded wheel to spin in order to strike a spark that essentially ignites two separate flames a moment apart, there's that lovely moment of hesitation between pulling the trigger and the shot actually firing. Not a full comedic beat (For those of you who do a bunch of acting or enjoy watching comedy films) but more time than most people in that proximity would be comfortable with.

Add to that the large size of the weapon, and you have something that can be turned aside by a hand or a weapon before it can be fired.

A sword, on the other hand, can not be turned aside before it is fired, because there is no delay and it does not fire!

Thus the person who selects the wheellock pistol in close quarters combat will be left with a VERY expensive club, while the person with the sword will have a sword.

And someone who has a sword -and- the use of two perfectly functioning hands can use one hand to wield the sword, while the other deflects the pistol away from their body, rendering the shot wasted. In the event the person with the wheellock pistol attempts to do the same with the sword at the same time, they will have one perfectly functioning hand to use that -very- expensive club with.

Here's a different video with appropriate timings provided. Shot at 400 frames per second and slowed to 50% speed.


By the 1 second mark the wheel has stopped rotating. So there is a 1/2 second delay in firing, there. After the wheel has stopped, the initial flare of sparks begins right at the 2 second mark. This provides us with a further 1/2 second delay in firing. We're up to 1 second, now!

Just before the 3 second mark, the primer catches, and the pistol fires with the brief muzzle flash vanishing right at the 4 second mark.

For those of you playing the home game. This gives your attacker over 1 full second of recognizing you have the wheellock, recognizing it is aimed at them, and attempting to both push the gun away and move their body out of your firing line. That is, of course, not including any time spent raising the weapon in order to aim it at your target.

That may not -seem- like much time. But the average -conscious- human reaction occurs within 0.25 seconds of seeing danger. That's going from seeing danger, recognizing what it is, and beginning the initial reaction to it. The remaining 8 tenths of a second is more than enough time to quickly slap the danger aside.

 

[Oofta]

...
Of course people would pursue mundane explosives, and thus eventually firearms. In a D&D world, alchemists fire isn’t even that expensive, as well, so it’s possible that alchemy (ie chemistry and other laboratory sciences) is more effective in D&D than IRL.

...

Would they? Initially gunpowder was quite low quality and not particularly good for going boom. Gunpowder was initially discovered in the 9th century. Even then it was likely an accidental invention that just burned rapidly. It was centuries before it showed up in bombs as far as we know.

Again, I don't think the game breaks if you have firearms I just think it's fairly easy to justify why they are not. However, modern firearms skew our idea of how effective guns were for most of history. They made sense for armies after centuries of development because of the ease of use. But you needed those centuries of experiments, failures and slow incremental improvement, often by the best and brightest people around. All while assuming someone didn't perfect a "spark" spell that could seek out gunpowder and make it go boom and that in a world where magic works the chemistry of gunpowder is still functional.

 

[Oofta]

Somebody had better go tell everyone with at least one, if not multiple, gunshot wound scars that they are dead.

Fifty Cent took nine rounds at close range. Including one in the chest and one in the head. Dude must've died that night and someone else is -pretending- to be him on stage.

And someone tell all those doctors to stop wasting their time on people who have been shot in the chest even though the mortality rate is 18% out of the 1,100 in this study: Unusually low mortality of penetrating wounds of the chest. Twelve years' experience - PubMed

Especially strange considering the mortality rate for those with cardiac damage from a bullet is only 24%.

I also PARTICULARLY like how you go on about people defending themselves against a sword having Defensive Wounds but act like someone in close range somehow isn't trying to, y'know, control the wrist and/or gun of the person pointing it at them like -that- never happens. All your gunshot victims are perfectly passive and your sword victims fight back. Weird that!

One shot to the torso, whether from a gun or a sword, is probably going to have a similar lethality without treatment. But the time involved that you can survive before treatment is going to be shorter with a sword because of the larger relative area of any damage done. Because a sword is, wait for it... Larger. And designed to impact a larger area than a bullet is. Meaning more blood vessels are open. Meaning you bleed out faster.

I believe the record is being shot 21 times and surviving.

 

[Steampunkette]

I believe the record is being shot 21 times and surviving.

WARMINGTON: Miracle Man survives 30 bullet wounds

This young man is hard to kill.

torontosun.com

30. New record set in 2018!

Poor guy must be beside himself surviving all those bullets when the first one -clearly- would have killed him.

Shattered bones, destroyed veins, perforated organs... Fortunately there was a hospital within walking distance because he walked to the hospital and showed them his health insurance card in order to receive treatment.

 

[jgsugden]

D&D is abstraction. Not simulation.

Clearly, inarguably, undeniably, inevitably and uncontroversially, the gunpowder components in our fantasy D&D worlds is just different than the real world such that the damage stated in the books, whatever it is, is appropriate.

 

[Sithlord]

WARMINGTON: Miracle Man survives 30 bullet wounds

This young man is hard to kill.

torontosun.com

30. New record set in 2018!

Poor guy must be beside himself surviving all those bullets when the first one -clearly- would have killed him.

Clearly he had stone skin cast on him for half damage

 

[Oofta]

WARMINGTON: Miracle Man survives 30 bullet wounds

This young man is hard to kill.

torontosun.com

30. New record set in 2018!

Poor guy must be beside himself surviving all those bullets when the first one -clearly- would have killed him.

Don't you know that every bullet is fired from a military grade long gun by a professional shooter that pierces the heart?

Obviously, here's what every bullet does:

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think the damage for firearms is basically fine. I think were it seems wonky is in making early firearms reasonably accurate within range, when compared to basically all other weapons they were not. Personally I think we'd get a more "realistic" comparative modeling if players couldn't add their Dex mod to the to hit for a musket or what have you.

Fifty Cent took nine rounds at close range. Including one in the chest and one in the head. Dude must've died that night and someone else is -pretending- to be him on stage.

I'm pretty sure the version of him who had to rely on pre-industrial medicine died.

Meanwhile the version of him who was a D&D character was brought back by healing magic immediately.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think the damage for firearms is basically fine. I think were it seems wonky is in making early firearms reasonably accurate within range, when compared to basically all other weapons they were not.

You could model that by giving them really short short ranges compared to their long ranges. Currently they have short ranges that are 1/3 of their long ranges whereas most other weapons have short ranges that are 1/4 of their long ranges. This seems like it should be other way around...

 

[Cadence]

Also worth noting: A wheellock pistol within arm's reach of a person with a sword and lethal intent would be useless.

I thought I had heard in general that a melee weapon was better than gun when close, with the smaller melee weapon becoming better as you force inside the comfortable range of the larger melee one. All of the top google links I got were just anecdotes though.

Are the shotgun and blunderbuss exceptions to a lot of the rules on the damage caused? (Or have all of the westerns lied to me about that too). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ful...pz4FbthDwmWco74RToGWwK44UDweJZgC7Ge2HDJ8OSrJA

 

[Stalker0]

The other thing we have to consider is the rate of attacks. Dnd has long given 1 attack to a longsword even though its quite possible to get 2 or even 3 attacks in the same space....we just use 1 attack for simplicity, saying that its the most "effective" of the attacks made.

But with early guns, it would be hard to argue that the gun fires more than once....its just once at round at absolute best, and realistically should only be possible if you have multiple weapons already loaded.

So even if we say firearms do more damage than a sword....considering that a sword can cut several times in the same space of a single musket fire....I think the sword is clearly going to do more damage.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Also worth noting: A wheellock pistol within arm's reach of a person with a sword and lethal intent would be useless.

I mean, that hasn't changed. An individual with a holstered gun being surprised by someone within 20 feet with a knife is almost certainly going to be mortally wounded before drawing their gun. Training videos for police tell you that if an attacker is closer than 10 feet you will be wounded before you have drawn your weapon even if you're on guard. Melee range is a lot further than you'd think. People are fast, reactions are slow.

Back to the original point, I think the problem is back to the design of the weapon table:

A dagger deals 1d4 damage. So does a throwing knife or dart.
Shortbows are a two-handed weapon, so they need to be better than daggers and darts somehow. They deal 1d6 damage.
Longbows are martial, so they need to be better than shortbows somehow. They deal 1d8.
Light crossbows have the loading property, so they need to be better than shortbows somehow. They deal 1d8 damage.
Heavy crossbows are martial, have the loading property, and are heavy, so they need to be better than everything above. They do 1d10 damage.

Guns are exotic, and they require rare and exotic ammunition (gunpowder) that as a rule can't easily be produced. They should outclass everything above. Pistols do 1d10, muskets do 1d12.

In short, can we please have class-based weapon damage rolls?

 

[Steampunkette]

I thought I had heard in general that a melee weapon was better than gun when close, with the smaller melee weapon becoming better as you force inside the comfortable range of the larger melee one. All of the top google links I got were just anecdotes though.

Are the shotgun and blunderbuss exceptions to a lot of the rules on the damage caused? (Or have all of the westerns lied to me about that too). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17416124.2020.1727630?casa_token=6WxPNO8c5lkAAAAA:TJVj2T4pE-TxDzVAdt_MtJpCecnQHL5nhpz4FbthDwmWco74RToGWwK44UDweJZgC7Ge2HDJ8OSrJA

In the case of the Wheellock Pistol it all has to do with the firing time. How long it takes for the gun to go off after you pull the trigger.

-MOST- early firearms had similar delays, or issues like having to keep the weapon almost perfectly level to keep powder resting in a steel tray so the smoldering wick could press down into it, or the flint could strike the steel to light it. And then that fire would ignite the powder deeper in the weapon and -then- the gun would go off.

As to Blunderbusses and Shotguns: They'll still -devastate- an unarmored person at short range.

Someone who is appropriately armored, though, facing a blunderbuss full of small round pellets is better off than he would be if he was facing off a musket, which keeps all of it's force in a single projectile. But the pellets that ricochet are still more likely to pass through joints in the armor, under the chin into the helmet, and things of that nature.

I mean, that hasn't changed. An individual with a holstered gun being surprised by someone within 20 feet with a knife is almost certainly going to be mortally wounded before drawing their gun. Training videos for police tell you that if an attacker is closer than 10 feet you will be wounded before you have drawn your weapon even if you're on guard. Melee range is a lot further than you'd think. People are fast, reactions are slow.

Back to the original point, I think the problem is back to the design of the weapon table:

A dagger deals 1d4 damage. So does a throwing knife or dart.
Shortbows are a two-handed weapon, so they need to be better than daggers and darts somehow. They deal 1d6 damage.
Longbows are martial, so they need to be better than shortbows somehow. They deal 1d8.
Light crossbows have the loading property, so they need to be better than shortbows somehow. They deal 1d8 damage.
Heavy crossbows are martial, have the loading property, and are heavy, so they need to be better than everything above. They do 1d10 damage.

Guns are exotic, and they require rare and exotic ammunition (gunpowder) that as a rule can't easily be produced. They should outclass everything above. Pistols do 1d10, muskets do 1d12.

In short, can we please have class-based weapon damage rolls?

13th Age style..? That's far from the worst idea, yeah... I could definitely see that.